Time is indeed precious, and creating content marketing for a complex b2b product or service can seem more daunting than the dreaded task of opening your emails after a week off.

But there is a way to make it easier. Knowing what requires attention and how often can free the stress of facing what seems like an overwhelming task underprepared.

How often should we tweet? When should we run a campaign? And when are prospects going to be interested in what we have to say?

Our new and improved Content Marketing Cookbook is here to help make your content work harder and smarter. Armed with the know-how and the know-when, content marketing has never looked more like a molehill.

Dedicating a little bit of time at set times of the day/week/month/quarter/year will help structure your output and keep those all-important leads trickling in, so read on to find out how to put content marketing into practice…

Daily

Tweet for ten: Give your Twitter some daily attention – around ten minutes should do it. Check out hashtags that are trending and see if there’s anything you can add to the conversation, search industry keywords for new content, and post something new to your feed. If you have long form thought leadership pieces or an interesting internal event going on, let your followers know.

Best done: First thing in the morning whilst commuting, or at your desk with a coffee.

Weekly

Write a blog: Keeping new content going onto your blog won’t only earn you some gold stars from Google and bump you up the SERPs, it will keep visitors to your site coming back for more. To gain the right audience, focus on just a handful of key themes. This way, you become an expert in your field and people will start looking to your blog for help and advice.

Best done: When you’ve got some inspiration. It’s much easier to write when you care about what you’re writing about. Outlining a few ideas and topics to focus on each quarter will allow a starter for ten which can be picked up when you’re ready.

Measure success: To know whether your content is resonating with the audience, take some time each week to analyse the performance of social media updates and blog visits. Then you can adjust your content output accordingly. If videos are performing well on social media, do more of that. If your blog on 2017 trends in your sector is the most visited page, make it a yearly thing or go into more detail in follow up blogs.

Best done: Once you’ve had a few months of creating content to see what average views and visits are.

Monthly

E-mail: There are many different functions of email marketing, whether it’s a monthly digest featuring business news and new work, or a promotional email for a whitepaper or an event. This might need some external support to build, but email marketing companies such as MailChimp provide drag and drop content boxes to easily build email templates.

Best done: when you’ve found your own optimal send time by undertaking A/B testing with your campaigns. You should also learn from your previous campaigns what date and time is best-performing.

Video: Ultra-short, 30-second spots can make a real impact – you could create a series of videos that tells a bigger story in instalments, released on a monthly basis. It doesn’t have to be Oscar worthy, but make sure you’ve set a style that can be distinguished as your own.

Best done: to feed into a quarterly marketing focus, and share across social media and within your monthly email newsletter.

Quarterly

Undertake some research: Depending on your sector and the desired outcome for your research, data collection can either be qualitative or quantitative. Good research creates the bones of a content marketing plan and to get most of the findings of your research, consider long-form content such as a whitepaper or report as the hero piece which can be repurposed.

Best done: Once a quarterly focus has been set. Stay abreast of developments in your sector and comment on them to establish yourselves as thought leaders.

Direct mail: Sending a direct mail should give explicit added value and a strong call to action to the recipient. What can you do for them? Your research is a great hook for offering added value.

Best done: Once your content marketing is in full swing. Then you have the option of whether you send the research piece as the direct mail or a teaser postcard with the URL to a download.

Refine your audience: As your market adapts to new technology or sector breakthroughs, specific needs of your audience will change. Use market research, real data and existing customer traits to find three or four commonalities in their motivations and challenges. Continuously building a more comprehensive persona will do wonders to help you create content that will connect with them.

Best done: There’s no time like the present to gain more insight. It may seem hard to find the time to do research, but it’s necessary to keep the leads rolling in!

These are just some of the content marketing tactics covered in our delectable Content Marketing Cookbook. Download it for free below, and if you want a chat with one of the chefs in the Upp content kitchen, please contact us.